Creating engaging content for your podcast should always be your main driving force but never forget the importance of social media!
It is such a fundamental tactic for growing your audience that we wanted to give you the tools to create a strategy for promoting your podcast on Instagram!

Users are changing, attention spans are decreasing, and more people are getting their content via mobile – that’s why having another touch point to your listeners can only help you and your show.

So, let’s look at how to use Instagram promotion and how to use it to the best of its (and your) ability!

How to Get Follows Via Your Bio

It’s the first thing that any potential podcast fan will see/read about you and your show and you’ve got just 150 characters to get them interested.How do you promote on Instagram with your bio, in a smart way?Apart from being THE place to summarize what you’re about – it’s also where you should provide users with a link to your show (driving traffic to your podcast) and your program’s unique hashtag (helping your searchability).
Our top advice is: use bitly to shorten your episode links and get some basic analytics or use many.link to provide users with just one link which will lead them to every platform your podcast is on, your newsletter and website!

And, remember to update your link every time you upload a new episode, that way your followers will know to keep checking back for new content.

Have a distinct content voice

When users are quickly scrolling through your page to see if something grabs their eye, your little squares are the tool to stop them in their tracks. But, HOW to get them to open a post and see what you’re about?

A trick which lots of experienced podcasters use is to post a quote from an upcoming episode and the supporting audio.
For your listeners, it helps create excitement by giving them an exclusive snippet, for you it allows you to visually communicate the sort of topics and themes you discuss and is another way to reiterate your branding.

Also, it’s a really great way to improve your reach – your guests’ followers mean you can connect with listeners who might not normally come across your program.
Be sure to tag your guests in any post and also provide them with a ready-made post so they can publish it on their page. For extra reach, make sure you add lots of Instagram friendly hashtags!
Instagram is ideal for promoting with hashtags– use your guests’name, themes your listeners would be interested in – anything you think will make your show more searchable!

Engage With Your Audience With Instagram Stories

If you’re wondering why it’s worth putting time into something which is only in the ether for 24 hours – think again! Stories are a fresh and engaging way to announce new content or immediate news to your followers and there’s an audience for it too, more than ⅓ of users are using Stories on a regular basis and 70% are watched with the sound on. However, we want to highlight that it’s not the right medium for presenting big news such as a new season launch – you want that to be on your feed where it can be found for a long period of time.

What are the positives of Stories?
Used correctly it gives you a way to interact with your audience via direct comments and questions, increase listener engagement by adding a poll and is also a space to tag guests! It’s also super easy to share your podcast if you publish via Spotify, however the real strength is that if your show has over 10,000 followers you can add a CTA to swipe up and listen to your show.

What are your options when creating a story? You can either create a SlideShare or a video. A SlideShare is a ‘static’ post of a series of still images – it’s a handy way to provide your audience with a tutorial, useful info or break your content down. A speedy way of making sure that your content is always on brand is to create a template, to get you started our designers created THIS one which you can feel free to use or just to give you some ideas to get started!

Promoting your podcast on Instagram with video is more personal and allows you to offer followers a behind the scenes view and sneaky peaks at interviews!Once you’ve got your Story, we’d recommend creating Highlight playlists – it’s a really smart move if you have time to do so as it means you package your content up into digestible playlists for your followers.

Use Instagram Ads to Target Your Fans

If you’re wondering how to create an ad on Instagram – then using your Stories is a great way to buy and publish Ads. By buying ad space you can promote your podcast with a short video clip. All you need is a Facebook account, an allocated budget, and some market research so you can better target your audience!

Be Human with IGTV

Different to Stories, IGTV allows you to create longer, more in-depth videos of up to an hour in length to communicate with your audience. These are portrait videos (instead of YouTube’s landscape format), which are a streaming channel designed for mobile users. Available to all Instagram users, you just need to click on the little TV icon above your Stories to get started!

Wondering what content to post here? IGTV is the channel to present you and your podcast, one-to-one to your listeners – treat it as you would Facebook Live. Be informative but relaxed, talk about you, your podcast, how it came about but most importantly – be yourself! Your listeners will love it if you seem approachable.
Also – remember to try and include a CTA, keep sending those followers to your latest episode!

Make Your Feed Unique!

Last up and possibly the most important part: the visual aesthetic of your account. Your Instagram feed is the visual voice of your podcast.
Apart from using it in a strategic way for marketing purposes, on a ‘basic’ level you also need to make it aesthetically pleasing to your followers. Craft content which is on-brand – whether that be vibrant, elegant or fun, curate it so that people want to know what your next steps are and most crucially – give it your own style.
You need to imagine that if someone saw a post, without knowing who published it, the user would instantly be able to recognize it just from your unique style!Mix up between video, audio, and static images – you can even link through to longer content if it isn’t ‘Gram friendly – ( here is a super simple explanation of how to post a video link on Instagram).
Want to see a podcaster already nailing it?theartofcharm does this to perfection.

There you have it. That’s our guide to using Instagram to promote your podcast.Once you’ve got your content to where you want it, don’t forget to embed your Instagram account to your website or podcast site!Of course we could have written pages more and this is only touching the subject but hopefully, you’ll feel more confident tackling the medium now you’ve read this article.

Good luck and happy ‘gramming!

Related

[…] Spreaker’s Georgia Grey is out with a new blog on increasing your visibility on the popular social media platform. She says attention spans are decreasing and more people are getting their content via mobile – that’s why having another touch point can only help your show. We agree. Read her blog HERE. […]